


The Cry of the Fallen Jedi

by crowleyshouseplant



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-18
Updated: 2017-02-18
Packaged: 2018-09-25 00:10:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9793799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crowleyshouseplant/pseuds/crowleyshouseplant
Summary: Barriss looks for Ahsoka after she disappears into the Sith Temple.





	

Barriss' bad luck did not begin the day Imperial Stormtroopers boarded her vessel in search of contraband material. Nor did her bad luck begin when she decided to take her leave of Ahsoka, who for some reason, had seemed to forgive a rather terrible thing Barriss had done a long time ago. Nor had the bad luck begun with that act, which had resulted in the death of innocent people and had caused a permanent rift between herself and Ahsoka--probably because Barriss had made a half-baked attempt to frame Ahsoka for the deaths of those previously aforementioned innocent people.

Under the watchful helmet of the trooper stationed as her informal guard, Barriss took a sip of tea from the thermos she kept belted in the same place she had once carried a lightsaber. The metal was designed to keep cold liquids cold for two standard days and hot liquids hot one and a half standard days. The "hot" turned to a pale luke warm after only twelve standard hours. False advertising, technically, but who was Barriss to judge?

The bad luck had more than likely started when Barriss had decided that Master Luminara didn't understand--that nobody understood. Master Luminara was dead, of course. They all were dead.

Except for Ahsoka, who was only more than likely dead. Searching for her was ridiculous but Barriss did not have much to do these days.

A man in a neatly pressed uniform stepped inside her cockpit. His lips thinned as he brushed shoulders with the stormtrooper who did not relax their stance. "We've had reports," the man said, "of a vessel meeting this description carrying contraband materials and being in contact with certain Rebel cells."

He stopped, as if he were expecting Barriss to quail beneath his very fine stature and his very authoritative mien.

Barriss took another sip of tea. "What sort of contraband?"

"Medical supplies, primarily. Food stuffs that have not been properly sanctioned by Imperial authority."

"You have found no such product in my possession," Barriss said quietly.

The man shifted. "There is still a great deal of ship to search."

Barriss nodded. "Please, take your time. I have no place to be." The tea made her tongue feel light and clean. Her hands relaxed in her lap as they once had when she meditated in the Temple she had helped destroy.

The man launched into a series of questions: who was she, what was her flight path, when she landed in Onderon, did she make contact with Saw Gerrera?

She answered each question truthfully, and the man's skin became whiter, his eyes slightly more wide, as he shuffled though his flimsiplasts.

Another man joined him, reporting they had been able to find no evidence of wrong doing. The original officer waved him off, and the stormtrooper also turned to accompany him. "A standard, routine audit," the man said, as if that would suffice to explain his failure.

Barriss remained seated as she stared up at him. "I am happy to oblige. I understand the Empire is just trying to keep its citizens safe." She breathed deeply, clearing her mind as she continued to speak. "But you failed to ask me a very important question."

The man reeled backwards. Spots of color appeared on his cheeks. "I did?"

"You never asked if I had ever corresponded with an individual code-named Fulcrum."

The man took a step towards her. "How do you know that name?"

"It doesn't matter how I know it," Barriss said.

The man's hand relaxed so that the flimsiplasts fell and scattered across the floor. "It doesn't matter," he repeated.

"Tell me everything you know about Fulcrum," Barriss said.

Fulcrum was a highly skilled intelligence agent who worked for the Rebellion. Fulcrum marked their highly classified intelligence with a sign. "Show me," Barriss said.

The sign hovered in holographic blue as he summoned it from one of his data files. Parallel lines, splintering into a diamond shape in their middle, flickered in front of her. Without even trying, she could see the face that bore those markings, and the way she once had smiled. Barriss' hands shook in her lap as she nodded for the man to go on.

"They say if Fulcrum was on our side," the man said, "the Rebellion would have been destroyed long ago."

"I don't care about that," Barriss said. "Please continue."

Fulcrum was also a skilled fighter, possessing swords of hard light. "Lightsabers, some call them. The Inquisitors I mean." 

Barriss kept her distaste from her face. "Describe Fulcrum's style."

Of course, the man could not describe the forms by name, but she recognized the way he described form five, which is what Ahsoka always favored. Some things never changed.

"Where was the last place your intelligence places Fulcrum?"

He was not able to tell her because that was, apparently, above his security level. The familiar cold took a hard grip on Barriss, and she clenched her hands around her tea. "You have been very helpful," Barriss finally said as she rose, and guided the man off her ship. "You needn't mention this conversation to anyone."

"I needn't mention this," the officer said as Barriss handed him over to his own men and returned to her ship. She drifted in space as she chewed her fingernails. The man had all but confirmed her suspicions that Ahsoka was Fulcrum, but hadn't been able to provide the one piece of information that she didn't know: where she had gone, and where she had been besides causing trouble for the Empire.

Ahsoka had already made contacts with rebels before they had fought and before Barriss had left again. Ahsoka had waited for Barriss to calm down and change her mind, and then she had left too. The ship had jumped to hyperspace a fraction too soon, a streak of light that vanished against the night sky. Barris had watched from the shadowed pavilion of the local bar in town. Dust had choked her throat, had made her eyes water.

Barriss did not focus on that. She had learned a long time ago how to look at a thought, touch a thought, and then put a thought neatly away. Of course, after taking her leave, Barriss had thought of Ahsoka. Had imagined that Ahsoka had chosen her over the cause, though Barriss knew she had not given her any particular reason to do that. 

Barriss accepted this, of course, but still she wished that Ahsoka had chosen her. But then, she would not be Ahsoka. She would have been someone else.

So yes, she had thought of Ahsoka frequently and with feeling--feelings of regret, loneliness, and not an uncertain amount of wistfulness. But lately, the feelings had turned into something more urgent, something more than nostalgia: the undefinable certainty that Ahsoka needed her help, that she was calling out to her.

But they had not spoken in years. Barriss had no idea how to answer the call. She had tried to meditate, to follow Ahsoka's voice through the Force, but the Force had abandoned Barriss long ago--or perhaps it had been the other way around. Cheap Jedi mind tricks didn't count. Anybody could do those.

Master Luminara would be disappointed all over again.

Impatiently, Barriss set a course to the place where they had left each other behind, the place that was supposed to be a quick pit stop instead of a secret rendezvous with a Twi'lek pilot. Barriss closed her eyes as stars streaked into hyperspace. She could still see the way the pilot had slouched in the seat, the one with the best view of both the entrance and the exit. She remembered how the bartender knew what drink she wanted before she even asked for it. The pilot, whoever she was, made coming there a habit.

Perhaps she still kept that habit, even after all this time, even if it would be dangerous. It was hard to give up something familiar, especially if everything else had already been lost. And even though there were thousands of Twi'lek pilots, Barriss was certain she would recognize her.

With her ship on autopilot, Barriss descended to the hold to find out why the stormtroopers had made an incomplete report to the officer who had not provided her the information she was looking for. The hold was quiet and empty and dark--perhaps they had just not looked carefully. Barriss waited a few moments for her eyes to adjust, and then she saw the convor, roosting in the eaves. Its feathers, glimmering ivory and green in the dimness, were fluffed into a puffball, as if it hadn't a care in the world.

It trilled quietly as Barriss approached, its eyes glittering even though there was hardly enough light to warrant such a reaction. "There's nothing here for you," Barriss said, as she always did.

But it had been living in her hold since Barriss had woken with the certainty that Ahsoka needed her. She reached out towards the convor through the shallow creek bed of the Force, the trickle that she could still sometimes find in herself, and felt that it was only a bird instead of something more.

"Don't you miss the sky?" It was one of the things she had missed the most while imprisoned. "Or the grass?"

The convor preened its feathers, little babbling sounds issuing from its beak as it did so.

"Show me the way," Barriss said. Perhaps, the Force had returned to her again in the shape of this strange bird. "I'll follow you, wherever you might lead."

The bird tucked its foot in its feathers and hid its head behind its wing.

True to her word, Barriss went to sleep.

She woke at the gentle shudder of the ship leaving hyperspace. They orbited the planet and received docking instructions. They landed, and Barriss waited at the bar. She waited for days, and then weeks, and then months. She waited so long she was forced to build a life for herself, something she could easily leave when the time came. She procured a job at the bar. As she cleaned up spilled alcohol, as she swept the floor, she wondered what Master Luminara would say if she could see her now. Would it be better to see her through the yellow deathstick haze or through the shimmering forcefield prisons where the air was clean and the light was white?  

The convor left the shelter of her ship, and joined in her waiting. It took to Barriss' shoulder, running its beak through her hair, and twittering at the customers she served. Sometimes, during the day, the convor would take flight and soar in circles over the town. It would always come back. During the night, it sat quietly at the window, tapping the glass with its beak, keeping Barriss awake so that she would rise from her cot, her blankets pooling between her bent knees. Her head bowed with exhaustion and weariness as the tip-tapping of the bird kept sleep at bay.

The tapping stopped when her bare feet touched the floor, as she settled into one of the meditative stances she had not tried for years, ever since they had left each other behind. The bird watched her, raising its wings when she raised her arms, bending its head downwards when Barriss wrapped her arms around her ankles and breathed.

One day, the Twi'lek pilot returned. She was not alone like she had been before. She was accompanied by a man wearing a mask and a teenager with blue-black hair buzzed short. The tray Barriss carried fell from her hands, and it nearly shattered to the ground before she caught it again.

The Force was strong with them.

She hadn't felt something like this since the Jedi lived, when she had still been one of them. Even this was a faint echo, a mockery almost of what she had once known, but it was something that remained when she had thought all was lost. These were Jedi--not had-beens like herself and Ahsoka.

The convor pressed its feathered head against her ear and cooed.

Barriss watched them closely as she served the other patrons crowding against the bar. She did not want to approach the pilot when she was accompanied with the Jedi. They would know her for who she was and for what she had done. 

The pilot would maybe only recognize her as the woman who had been with Fulcrum that one time many years ago.

After a few minutes, the pilot gestured outside and the Jedi and his padawan left, leaving her alone. Barriss seized her chance, wiping her hands on her apron as she approached.

The pilot didn't even raise her head. "I was wondering when you were going to come see me, but then realized the others were scaring you." She raised her eyes. They were softer than Barriss remembered, sadder too. "It's been a long time."

Barriss nodded. "I've come to ask about Ahsoka. About Fulcrum."

The pilot tilted her head to the side. Her lekku slid across her shoulder. "I remember you." She raised her hand to the seat that had been occupied by the Jedi. Reluctantly, Barriss sat down, and put her hands in her lap. Distantly, she realized that she should be concerned about the abandoned bar, and how Theo would not be happy about it. She would be fired.

She didn't care. She probably would not return here again.

The pilot glanced at her shrewdly. "Why do you ask about Ahsoka? You were only with her once and then I never saw you with her again." The pilot took a sip of her drink. "It would seem to me that you parted ways, so how do I know you didn't find your path to a new career as an Imperial spy?"

That was a fair question. Barriss's folded her hands together, her fingers clenched into fists, safely hidden under the table. "I have no love for the Imperials."

"But you don't fight against them."

Barriss could see, could feel, the judgment in her eyes. Cold, damp shame stuck along the channel of her spine. "I'm not in the habit of fighting wars. Not anymore." Wasn't one war enough?

The pilot leaned back in her seat as if Barriss had proved something about herself to her.

"I must find Ahsoka," Barriss said. The bird chirped and ran from one shoulder to the other. "I can hear her call, but I can't find her."

The pilot said nothing, only folded her arms across her chest and waited for more.

Barriss wet her lips with her tongue. She raised her hands from the table, smoothing the wood with her palm. She gestured, slightly. "You want to tell me where Ahsoka is."

The pilot straightened. The skin around her eyes tightened, the worry lines becoming more defined. Her mouth curled around her teeth. Her lekku trembled and twitched. She may not have been strong in the Force, but she was certainly not weak minded. Barriss slumped backwards. Maybe if she were still in the first war, she would try harder, but she did not have the heart.

Besides, the convor was already pecking at her hand in disapproval.

They sat in silence, the pilot looking as if she knew exactly what had happened but as if she were biting down on her words. Barriss almost wanted her to accuse her of being a Jedi here in this crowded bar. Let the Imperials come. Maybe they would drag her to Ahsoka and they could actually share a jail cell, for once.

Shadows fell over the table, and Barriss glanced upwards at the Jedi and his padawan, who was staring at her with open curiosity. The Jedi's hand was heavy on his shoulder, and Barriss realized that he was blind.

"Is this person bothering you, Hera?"

Hera--Hera Syndulla. That had been her name. She was the daughter of a famous rebel. How could Barriss have forgotten?

"No, Kanan," Hera said. "She's asking questions about Fulcrum."

The padawan grew excited as he turned to her. "Ahsoka? You knew Ahsoka?"

"Ezra," Kanan warned, and he immediately fell silent.

"I need to know where Ahsoka is," Barriss said. "I can hear her calling through the Force. Can't you?"

Kanan's skin paled underneath his beard. "I know your voice." She felt him reach out to her through the Force, and she recoiled. "You're the one who bombed the Jedi Temple. You betrayed us, and fell to the Dark Side."

The cold goosebumped her skin. "We were already there," she whispered. "I'm just looking for Ahsoka."

"Funny you should say that considering you were the one who framed her for your crime. Did you do something else you need her to take the blame for?"

Her belly free-fell as she raised her eyes to Kanan. For a moment, his mask appeared to be just like the ones the Jedi Temple Guards used to wear, and then it wasn't. Barriss took a deep, nervous breath. Of course this Kanan would recognize her. Of course he would see the crimes she had committed, the guilt she bore. She tried to put the guilt away, and focused on the convor sitting at the base of her neck, forcing her to bend slightly forward.

Ezra glanced between her and his master. "If she can help Ahsoka--" He fell silent when both Hera and Kanan looked at him.

So Ahsoka was in trouble. "I have waited a long time for you, Hera," Barriss said, turning away from Kanan. "You know that she and I were working together before we parted ways. I am no Imperial spy, and I only want to help her. If she could find it in her heart to put aside the past, then surely you can as well. Please, tell me where she is."

She knew that her words carried no lie through the Force. She could still feel Kanan's presence, sniffing around. Hera's eyes looked past her own towards Kanan, and she nodded quickly before she finally said, "Malachor."

Barriss heard what Hera said perfectly, despite the clanking of dishes, the white noise of patron chatter, and the shuffle of too many feet on a sticky floor. Still, she said, "Excuse me?"

Hera looked at her drink like she may have been ashamed.

Ezra leaned in, eagerly. "Master Yoda told us to go there."

The thin cord of Barriss' patience tightened, twisting through her. "Yoda," she said between gritted teeth, "is a fool, and he betrayed us all by doing nothing to stop the Jedi's fall to the Dark Side."

They tried to interrupt her, the voices of the master and his padawan, but she did not let them. "Malachor is a haven for the Dark Side. It is a site of war and bloodshed." She gripped the table so hard her nails dug gouges into the alcohol-watered surface. "You know what war is. You've been fighting one since you were a child." She glared at both Hera and Kanan and then, numbly, Ezra because he was just like the rest of them. And they allowed it, just as Yoda had. Battles she had tucked away came slipping back. She could smell the acrid stench of melted armor. She could hear the cries for help as clones died and the Jedi were too few and had to press their advantage to victory or, more often, flee from defeat. Pain wounded her. "Ahsoka was too young to become a padawan fighting on the front lines of a war. She was a child--just like me." She turned back to Ezra. "Just like you. But Ahsoka was never the type to get out of something." Not like Barriss was. Barriss spread her hands. "She didn't know how to stop fighting. And so you brought her to Malachor."

"It was more or less the other way around," Kanan said. "She knew more about it than we did."

"Why is she there?"

Reluctantly, they told her about the Sith temple and its holocron. They told her about her duel with the one they called Darth Vader. Something troubled Ezra about their confrontation, but he did not share it with her, and Barriss did not care enough about Darth Vader to press him.

"You left her behind," she said, once they had finished.

The convor trilled softly in her ear. Barriss had no interest in its comforts.

"It wasn't like that," Kanan said.

Hera reached out for her, her fingertips gently brushing against Barriss' bare knuckles. "The temple--it imploded, Barriss. It's very likely that--" Hera did not finish her thought.

Barriss shook her head. Ahsoka was alive, or else Barriss would not have heard her. But she was trapped on Malachor, with the Dark Side, and the Dark Side corrupted. Barriss knew this intimately. Even if she did manage to find Ahsoka in the ruins of the Temple, would she be the same? Of course, Ahsoka had changed in the interim between her betrayal and her rescue, but there was something about her that would always be Ahsoka, no matter what happened, no matter how much time had passed.

But would the Ahsoka Barris found have eyes no longer blue? Would her words be sharp and cruel?

Barriss took a sharp intake of breath. Once, fire had burned and, wearing a mask, she had advanced upon Ahsoka, her friend. She had struck her when she was already tired and weak, instead of helping her to her feet and coming forward with her guilt. She had pushed Ahsoka down several stories. She could still feel the thud of her body hitting the floor, the wonder in her voice as she realized she had found the tech that had caused so much destruction. She could still hear the pain in her voice as she asked Barriss if it was true.

It was true. All of it was true.

"I need to go," Barriss said, rising to her feet.

They did not try to stop her with word or deed. She had kept her ship in good repair, and it started easily. She did not wait for clearance. It was only when she was in hyperspace that she realized she was still wearing her stained and faded apron. She took it off and tossed it in a corner. Automatically, she input the coordinates for Malachor, and waited for the journey to reach its end.

The convor waited with her, its bright eyes facing the viewport.

Malachor's atmosphere was thick with storm clouds. Lightning flashed, and she struggled to control her ship against the wind currents. It was more of a crash landing, but at least she walked away with only a small headache knotting in her temple.

The convor left her shoulder, flying low enough for Barriss to follow, and so she did. Debris littered her way, and she could see what she assumed was the top of the Sith temple, blown away from whatever force had brought it to ruin. The land gaped wide, and Barriss carefully picked her way into the depths of the planet and what remained of this place of worship. The lower she went, the colder she became. A sick sweat slicked her skin, and as Barriss passed by the moldering skeletons of Sith and Jedi both, she also walked through the battlefields over which she herself had fought. The grief unsealed itself from within her heart. Tears slid down her cheeks though she made not a sound.

The anger she had harbored and leashed in some hidden place trembled in her hands. "How could they do this," she had asked Master Luminara. Blood--not hers of course--was smeared across her skin. The wars should have been bloodless with blaster fire and the cauterizing heat of a lightsaber blade, but somehow it never was.

Master Luminara didn't have an answer for her, but she believed that they were doing the right thing. That they were doing their duty as Jedi, that this would be their greatest test, and they would walk away from it wounded but stronger.

But they hadn't, and they had died.

Barriss tripped to her knees. Locked in the heart of Coruscant, she had felt it all, she had heard their screams, she had smelled the smoke from the burning temple.

Her hands curled in the dust, burying chunks of bone under her fingernails.

The Jedi had failed their test, and so had Barriss.

Had Ahsoka been among the fallen? Had Master Luminara? She knew the answers, but they circled through her again as they once had when she had cowered, shivering, in her jail cell. What about the others?

The convor landed in the space between her knees, chirruping questioningly before again taking flight and flying in a lazy circle a little way in front of her.

Ahsoka lived. Master Luminara didn't. The Jedi were gone.

Barriss whispered the answers to herself as she rose to her feet, body swaying in the silence as she followed the convor deeper and deeper through the ruins until it disappeared through a triangular shaped entrance thick with shadow. Barris didn't hesitate, only followed the convor down a shallow flight of stairs.

As she passed, lichen that clung to the damp stone walls cast a bioluminescent redness through the shadows. The air was warm and stale, not like on Geonosis. She had breathed in hot dust that settled low in her lungs. She had coughed it up after their ordeal on the ship. Ahsoka had risen from her own bed, had patted her shoulder as she hacked and choked and wondered why Ahsoka had not killed her as she had asked, as she had begged.

Instead, she lived another day in war, in fear. The stairs were narrow, like the factory tunnels they had both crawled through like fragile, frightened worms in order to complete the mission. The air hung as close around her as Ahsoka's breath, and then her hand, as Barriss waited for death and Ahsoka for rescue.

Her foot stumbled under crumbling stone and she slid downwards, the convor hooting sympathetically above her. Barris lay on the stairs for a few moments, breathing through her nose as she waited for her lurching heart to go back to normal.

She brought her shaking hands to her throat, where the worm had screamed from her gaping mouth, speaking words that Barriss did not mean, that were not hers. She waved her hand, as if she could trick herself into believing herself that it was just that one time, that one thing, that it didn't matter (even though it did, something whispered).

It hadn't been fair what had happened to her. It hadn't been right. Ahsoka should have killed her--it would have been a mercy. Even now, should she find Ahsoka and Ahsoka was so changed that she cut her down without even a thought, without even a goodbye, it would be a mercy.

The convor pulled her hair with its beak and she climbed to her feet once more, descending the stairs until she felt like an old woman.

Her foot splashed in water, startling her. The damp coldness seeped through the worn leathers of her boot.

But the cold was natural. It wasn't like the sith-cold that had clung to her since she arrived.

The water rose from her ankles to her knees to her waist. Its current was swift, and it pulled at her body, at her clothes. It washed her memories free, and she was swept off her feet. Her mouth opened as she tried to call out for Ahsoka, but her voice was lost in the sob that cracked through her. Ahsoka, still able to smile even after everything, when she had called Barriss for help, and Barriss had provided treachery instead. Master Luminara, her eyes empty, as she gazed at Barriss through the forcefield and asked her why. Skywalker, enraged at her betrayal, sparing her only so that he could provide her as proof of Ahsoka's innocence.

The fallen bodies of the clones. The fallen bodies of the Jedi. Ahsoka falling and falling and falling after Barriss pushed her down.

The water lapped into her mouth as it took her from the temple. She swallowed it eagerly and it washed the last remnants of the Geonosian sand from her, where it had settled into little dune piles of waiting worms waiting to hatch. She folded her hands together, and she remembered how Ahsoka had raised her to her feet, and how she had kicked Ahsoka to her knees.

The water pulled her under, and she was not afraid to drown. Through its rippling surface, she found the distorted image of the convor. Perhaps it would find Ahsoka for her. Perhaps, Ahsoka would know that Barriss had finally come.

Instead of drowning her, the water dumped her at the base of another flight of stairs. Barriss threw up the river running through the shallow creek bed that had once been her connection to the Force until she was empty once more. Her hair dripped around her ears as she panted for breath so she would have the strength to climb.

She climbed until her legs shook, until her knees caved in towards each other. She climbed until she reached the end, entering a room bright with a pale light.

In its center sat Ahsoka in meditation. A large wolf-like creature slept behind her, its belly bracing Ahsoka's back, its back legs curled around her thigh, its head in her lap. It also slept.

"Ahsoka?" Barriss' voice broke. For a moment, Barriss thought her luck had finally changed. She waited for Ahsoka to greet her by name and by smile, to say that she was glad that she had finally come.

But Ahsoka did not stir, and grief split through Barriss as she slowly made her way towards her.

The wolf did not wake either.

Slowly, Barriss lowered herself so that she sat opposite from Ahsoka. "It's me," Barriss said, though she didn't know the value of that. She looked upwards at the convors, and closed her eyes. She no longer heard Ahsoka's cry through the Force, so she supposed that meant something--though what, she didn't know. She had come as Ahsoka had asked, but she didn't wake.

Before she could talk herself out of it, she put her hands over Ahsoka's like the Jedi sometimes did when they meditated together, even though that was not always encouraged. She did it even though they weren't Jedi anymore or maybe because they weren't Jedi anymore. She did it because it seemed the right thing to do.

"However long it takes," Barriss whispered, "I will wait with you."  

**Author's Note:**

> Barriss refers to Ahsoka rescuing her. In reference to this: [[click here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6620233)]
> 
> Imagery of Barriss in the temple inspired by the trading cards: [[click here](https://thewookieegunner.com/2016/07/15/swce-2016-ahsoka-tano-digital-cards-topps/)]


End file.
